The thing about Twitter is that it’s not the most popular microblogging/web IM/whatever service out there because it’s better than others. It’s the most popular because it’s more…twittery than other services. You can’t really put a finger on its magic: Pownce has more features and it looks nicer, but even I don’t see it overtaking Twitter any time soon (and that’s despite Twitter’s unbeliavably frequent downtime incidents).

Enter Plurk; discovered by Inquisitr, it’s another Twitter clone which takes the Twitter concept and puts it on a timeline. The service has an odd, quirky feel to it; it’s much more visual than Twitter, and it’s a real fun to use. It uses colors to emphasize your ‘moods’, and it introduces the concept of karma, which should be familiar to Reddit users; the more you use the service, the more karma you get. In this case, karma even lets you unlock certain features, which almost feels like a mini game (if you like very boring mini games). Finally, just like Pownce, Plurk lets you divide your friends into “cliques”, which is just a fancy word